1) Make the 'donate' button somewhere in the beginning so people can actually see it.
2) Make targets (Sabayon/wiki style) and show a progress bar. Place it in the forums also, once donated, the bar will disappear and instead a 'thank you' will appear; of course this is for registered users only.
3) To make www.gentoo.org look 'modern Jane' rather than plane one, use HTML 5._________________Buy from companies supporting opensource -- IBM, Dell, HP, Hitachi, Google etc...
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More seriously, i don't think a donate bar for users is "classy", nor good for reputation.
We can buy mugs & shirts... for that, and it's somehow better, you don't force anyone, like, yeah we don't need or care.

I prefer gentoo keeping its reputation of "serious" with the corporate. And would like more article like the one with SevenL network put in light.
Really prefer that way than looking like a whore as sabayon (sabayon users don't get offend by my point of view, and wtf you are doing here anyway, go to your forum)
It's just for a little website, community (like clans of players...) the donation bar is good to show the effort & progression, but for a big project/distro like gentoo it's not really serious. And it would be so shame if the bar don't grow fast or worst if the bar never reach 100%

For marketing tactic i would say something that won't affect gentoo users but still can affect non-gentoo users point of view. Like releasing some dvd (as they done with the anniversary one) more often so distrowatch and other stupid ranking site will speak more about that great distro.

Fame comes from the media, not from the distro stability, the more one speak about you, the more people you will touch (if anyone have a sextape of larry the cow, release it ffs !!!)

How comes gentoo put a contest for desktop picture or the actual larry the cow graphics contest and no-one told media about it ??? That's an easy way to give news about gentoo, increase audience...

Let's say you build the most awesome distro that never need update -> you'll raise your reputation, but sadly your fame will be equal to 0 because no one ever heard news about you.

That's gentoo, people never really speak about gentoo, only aware users will speak about it, generally in good terms about speed/custom/portage & stability (and also learning/hard to install). And in bad terms (gentoo dying/too hard to handle/compile time).
But that's a few audience.

Yep, maybe the Gentoo guys will not like the bar, but at least the donate button should be a bit more visible, so people have the topic at mind at least.

Another way might be branded default wallpaper for the Desktop environments and such other small things... you know Firefox does that and gets paid huge sums.

Also I'm not talking about fame, it's more about finances.

Quote:

but for a big project/distro like gentoo it's not really serious

Gentoo is not as big as Wikipedia... even they show the bar, it's nothing bad! Like it or not, it is a good idea and it does increase the overall donations... we saw that with wiki last year, it was a success._________________Buy from companies supporting opensource -- IBM, Dell, HP, Hitachi, Google etc...
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